Nine Times Dean Needed Sam Part 9
by Onyx Moonbeam
Summary: Never Leave me.' Happy Birthday Mad Server! Part nine of your birthday collection featuring Needy!Dean. In this part: Dean needs Sam to fight for him. Sam needs Dean to fight for himself.


**Title**: Nine Times Dean Needed Sam - Part 9: Never Leave Me.  
**Author**: Onyx Moonbeam  
**Disclaimer**: These characters do not belong to me.  
**Posted**: 8th Mar 2010  
**Spoiler Alert:** Very mild spoilers at the end for the Season 3 finale.

**Fellow Players**: Enkidu07, Supernoodle, PA Davis, Sidjack, Liafrombrazil, Soncnica, Hanson's Angel, and IheartSam7

**A/N**: Happy Birthday Mad Server! Hope your year was awesome, and that the next one is even better.

This is not the story I meant to write. I'm actually not sure where it came from.

Also, I stole a scene from Firefly. Unrepentantly.

-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-

It started out ominously and only got worse. Vague threats passed on from other hunters turned to promises of death, notes left with mutilated bodies, and it all pointed in one direction. Something was after Dean.

Not that extraordinary, really. Something was after him on a daily basis. But usually they went looking for it. Usually he was the hunter, not the hunted.

And usually they could figure out what the hell it was, figure out how to kill it.

It was stealthy, killed quietly, never left a trace of evidence behind. Killed without people in the next room even noticing. And there were psychological effects.

The victims were paranoid, knew something was after them. Which, really, something was, so that made sense. But they hadn't protected themselves. Usually when people knew they were being hunted they gathered supplies and barricaded themselves, or they ran.

These people didn't bother. They were terrified, but kept to a normal schedule. Almost like they knew there was no hope of escape. No reason to try. They left notes to loved ones. Not suicide notes, just goodbyes. Nothing at all to indicate they fought.

Nothing in Dad's journal gave them a clue. Bobby had nothing either.

Dean had started out pissed off. Mad that something was after them, that they couldn't figure out what. Nothing new, but this went deeper. Underneath the anger was guilt, he thought he hid it. Dean always thought he hid everything, Sam could read him like an open book.

"There's nothing you could have done, Dean. No way we could know it'd be here. No way to have saved her." Sam stood over the sixteen-year-old girl, bent to tuck the hair covering her face back behind her ear. Watched his brother's eye close against tears as Dean leafed through her sparkly pink journal.

"Doesn't make it better." Dean placed the journal on her nightstand, left it open to the final entry.

_It's here for me. I don't know where I'm going, I'm scared. But it'll be okay. Right? That's what it tells me anyhow. Goodbye Mom. I love you._

And scrawled below in blood.

_Dean Winchester. This is the fourth. You are number ten._

Sam tore out the page. Tucked it into the journal with the other three.

-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-

"Lets meet it head on, it's circling around us. Maybe if we just. Stay still?" Dean glanced up at Sam's words, half shrugged before turning back toward his magazine.

"Not much point doing anything else."

It wasn't until they found the latest victim, still living, but counting the hours, that it really hit Sam just how far gone Dean was.

They'd gotten the tip from Bobby. A friend of a friend of a friend. Said it was his time, he was gonna die. Started talking to people who weren't there. Everyone thought he was crazy.

Sam and Dean were staked out across the street, Bobby was inside with the guy. He'd protested, said there was no use. No reason to fight.

"He's right, you know. There's no point." Dean played with the hole in his jeans, dug his fingernail against the frayed edge.

"There's always a point, Dean. Always something worth fighting for." At the halfhearted shrug Sam reached over, grasped Dean's jaw, forced eye contact. Had to press the pad of his thumb hard into the hinge of Dean's jaw to get a reaction. "Hear me man? I'm here. Aren't I worth fighting for?"

"You won't be the one dying."

Then they're both out of the car as shots come from the house. Shotguns ready, but it's over already. The man's dead, eviscerated, Bobby's staring at the wall. Blood spread garish on the white walls.

_That's 7, Dean._

"I never saw it coming, just a man bent over him, feeding almost. Then the words appeared on the wall." Bobby's shaken. Dean's silent, still. Doesn't even look guilty anymore.

-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-

Luckily the seventh guy was the missing piece of the puzzle. When they connect them all on a map it seems so obvious. Leads them to a dusty old book in Bobby's library. Gruesome murders gone wrong, leaving victims clinging to the edge of life and death for so long that they start to relate to the reaper. Start to think they are reapers, start looking for wayward murderers to take over to death.

Apparently Dean caught one's attention. Killed something in its hometown. The thing's so far gone it can't differentiate between people and monsters anymore. Its other victims have all committed wrongdoings, some small, some large. Tax fraud, hit and runs, the teenaged girl cheated on her SAT's.

They track it to an abandoned hospital. Where the thing died the first time.

Dean goes in first. His apathy slowly breaking apart as the facts present themselves. Grief and guilt and horror at how far gone he was breaking into pure furor. This thing killed in his name.

Sam's just glad to see emotion.

It's visible while it sleeps, Dean almost has the silver buried in its heart when it wakes, screams with fury, attacks Dean.

Bobby and Sam are thrust from the room. The door slams closed in front of them. Held closed by a spirit there's no point trying to break it down. Sam's pulling Bobby toward the other entrance to the ward. He memorized the blueprints last night. The ward doors are rusted over and padlocked shut.

One well-placed shot and the old chain broke. They burst through the doors, guns raised. Dean was body to body with it, struggling to free himself, slowly being pushed over a stairway railing. The stake was at its heart, pressing into its chest through the tattered black suit the thing wore, black smoke seeping out from the wound.

Sam threw his arm in front of Bobby, "Wait. This is something he has to do for himself."

He's barely registered Dean's panicked look before the gasping words come, "No. No, it's not."

"Oh!" And both their guns are up. Dean's pushed himself back, just enough that Sam can get off the shot. Silver bullet to the brain. Bobby's goes into its heart. The silver's eating its way through flesh, and Dean finishes it off with an iron tinged silver stake through its heart.

-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-

They salt and burn it, just a precaution. Dean throws on the match, stays tense even as it burns to ash.

They say goodbye to Bobby, promise to see him soon. As he heads out Sam grasps him tight, whispers, "Thank you."

Sam's never been a huge fan of the post-hunt drinking binge, but this time they both need it. He's been driving for a week now, since Dean stopped caring. He slides into the driver's side, Dean glares a bit, opens his mouth to protest, but cuts it short. Sam wishes he'd gotten a bitchy comment instead of acquiescence.

Five beers in and Sam's a sloppy drunk. Can't seem to keep from touching Dean, backslaps held a bit to long, laying his hand on the sticky table so his fingers just touch the cuff of Dean's jacket. Dean stills when Sam's knee knocks into his leg, glances down when Sam tries to touch his sneaker to Dean's boot without his brother noticing.

"I'd never leave you on purpose, Sammy."

"I know." Sam shifts closer, "You did once though."

"Fine, I'd never leave you unless it was to save your life."

"Save yourself, I'll be fine." Sam ducked his head at Dean's smile, okay, maybe he was acting like a petulant teenager.

"I will if you will."

"Deal." And if Sam holds on to the handshake a few beats too long, no one mentions it.


End file.
